LinkedIn is one of the best platforms to use if you are a professional, and you are trying to network with others in your industry. It’s great for connecting and messaging with many other people out there, and it’s also a great way to build your influence and find the best customers for your brand.
As LinkedIn has developed as a service, new features have come out, which makes it more competitive with other social media networks out there. One feature that has come out recently has been read receipts.
Let’s take a look at what a read receipt is and how you can use it to your advantage.
What is LinkedIn Read Receipts?
If you have sent out a message on LinkedIn, you are probably wondering whether the person on the receiving end has had a chance to see it. When you are trying to connect with someone, it’s pretty helpful to know whether your message has been read or not.
Read receipts are there to show you whether someone has opened your message and read it. It is at the bottom right of your messages. If you are using a desktop, you can hover your mouse over the icon, and it will show you not only if the person has read it but what time they read it.
There’s another feature, which is called the typing indicator, and this shows whether the recipient is responding to your message or not.
You can use both of these features when you are trying to make new connections. They are a great way to gauge how the conversation is going, as well as whether you should be following up on your first message.
How Does it Work?
When you first sign up for your LinkedIn profile, the read receipts will automatically be turned on. However, if you want them to be active in the conversation that you are having, both people have to have them turned on. If both parties have got their read receipts on, then you’ll see a small icon in the corner that shows you that your message has been read.
If you are on desktop for LinkedIn, then you will also be able to see the time when they read it. However, you won’t be able to see the date. This means that you will be able to work out when they saw your message, but not necessarily on what day they saw it.
If you’re using LinkedIn features like the LinkedIn sales navigator to connect with new people, then it can be helpful to know whether somebody has opened your message or not. It can also help you work out which people to target and which to leave alone.
When it comes to figuring out which messages you have read in your own inbox, the ones that you haven’t opened yet will be in bold, with a little blue notification on the right-hand side. This indicates how many messages you have in that particular conversation that are unread.
How to Improve Your Messages
If you are trying to make improvements to the way that you communicate with others on LinkedIn, then we’ve got some helpful advice below to make your messages better. Whether you are trying to reach out to someone for the first time or say thank you, you will want to keep these things in mind:
- Be Short and To the Point: Remember not to go on too long about how great your experience or product is. Make sure to be friendly and relevant, yet concise with your words. Otherwise, you are quickly going to lose the recipient’s attention, and they might not even reply to you.
- Don’t Sell Anything: There aren’t too many professionals out there on LinkedIn that want to receive your generic sales pitch, and if they do, they will be highly unlikely to reply. This is why it’s important that you save the sales pitch for when you have managed to build up a solid relationship with them.
- Keep it Professional: One of the most important things to remember about using LinkedIn is that it is a professional network, where most people are using it to do business. This is why you need to make sure that all of your messages reflect this so that you stay professional when it comes to your approach and your language.
If you keep these points in mind, then you can definitely increase the chances of your messages heading home and the recipients responding to you in a way that is meaningful.
How to Turn Read Receipts On or Off
Of course, just because read receipts is a feature on LinkedIn doesn’t mean that everybody is going to want to use it. Of course, with this kind of feature, there is the added pressure to reply, which might force people to avoid reading a message completely.
Luckily, you can easily turn off the feature:
For Desktop
To switch read receipts off on your desktop, go to the settings page, which you can access from the top right corner of your profile. Find the ‘communications’ tab. There will be a number of different options available, including notifications and messaging experience.
You want to click on messaging experience. Once you’re in this section, scroll down until you see read receipts and typing indicators. There is a button here that you can click to turn it on and off, depending on your personal preferences.
For Mobile
Luckily, the process of turning read receipts on or off on your mobile is pretty similar to on your desktop. First, you will need to click on your profile icon, which you will see on the top left of your screen. From here, click on the ‘settings’ option, and you will see a number of different options.
Choose the communications tab, and go right down to the bottom. Here you will also see the read receipts and typing indicators setting, which you can select. From here, you can decide whether you want read receipts to be on or off.
FAQs
Does LinkedIn Show When I Was Last Active?
If you don’t change any LinkedIn settings when you first create your profile, then LinkedIn will automatically show when you are active and able to communicate. However, you can turn this feature off.
What is the Green Dot on LinkedIn?
The green dot on LinkedIn indicates when someone is currently active on the platform. That means that they are logged in and actively using it.
Can Someone See if I Have Viewed Their LinkedIn?
If you’re not logged into the site, and you view someone’s public profile, then it won’t register, and that person won’t find out that you visited their profile.
Can You Find Out How Long Someone Has Been on LinkedIn?
If you are a first-level connection with someone, then you can easily see when they first joined the site and when you were first connected to them.
Top-rated Services for LinkedIn
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Final Thoughts
LinkedIn tools like typing indicators and read receipts are valuable if you are trying to manage a sales process. This is because they give you the opportunity to see whether or not your messages that are going out are being received well or not. It also gives you a chance to see whether or not someone is trying to reply or not.
However, if you’re not confident with using a feature like this, and you’d rather not know if someone has read your message or not, then you can easily turn it off, just as we explained above. Good luck, and don’t forget to use LinkedIn features like this to your advantage!
